Assignment 1: Contrasts - Black / White

Although I spent quite some time gathering together the images for this assignment, I am now pulling them all together here and describing what led me to take these photographs for this assignment.

Starting off this journey with Black and White.  I had some time ago earmarked a photograph I had taken during a course on wedding photography as one which would ideally represent white, however, I found that finding a suitable contrast kept defeating me.  I had in my mind a chimney sweep, but this was going to be somewhat difficult to achieve so I searched for coal as a suitable substitute.  One of my more recent trips in search of suitable images for various parts of the assignment, led me to a local steam engine restoration centre - at last, a supply of coal!  So for this first pair of contrasts, a bride and coal:




Black: ISO 200 105mm f 6.3 1/160



Photographing a black subject is not without challenges and I ended up with adjusting exposure and contrast in Lightroom in order to arrive at a photograph which had some life.

White: ISO 400 105mm f4 1/50

To match the monochrome of the coal, I decided to change the photograph to black and white, particularly as I felt this would enhance the whiteness associated with a bride.